Hearing the Shofar’s Cry in the Jerusalem of Lithuania
October 2, 2019
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I spend a lot of time in cemeteries. It’s part of the gig: I’m a rabbi. And my Hebrew name — Avraham Yitzhak — is common enough that I often see myself on gravestones, an eerie reminder of the liturgy we’ll recite this Rosh Hashana: “A man’s origin and end is from dust.”
But last month, I came face to face with my actual name: Avram Mlotek. There it was, on a stone right next to that bearing the name of my grandfather, Joseph Mlotek.